


Through My Eyes

by allthebros



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Divination, Fae & Fairies, M/M, Mystery, Psychic Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-17 02:10:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21258488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allthebros/pseuds/allthebros
Summary: Jonny's in trouble and he needs Patrick and his Gift's help.(an excerpt/ficlet of a little psychic!Patrick urban fantasy AU with graphic for Halloween)
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 12
Kudos: 135
Collections: Hawksloween





	Through My Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> I've have a psychic!Patrick idea in my head for YEARS but never got around to figuring it out or making the graphic for it I wanted to make. So this year was the year! The ficlet ended up being longer than I thought it would be, but this is my humble, WIP offering to the season.
> 
> Thanks to sorrylatenew for support and super quick beta. I don't know what I'd do without you. <3

He doesn’t see the it at first. Has to walk past the main door of the bar before spotting it, tucked into the lower corner of the window. A small neon sign. Pink and red and yellow, an eye, the words ‘psychic’ in cursive.

Jonny stares for a second and takes a few steps back to check the name of the bar again. Then up and down the deserted road. A street lamp’s bulb burns out, the neon sign of a nearby laundromat flickers and buzzes. The asphalt is dark and slick from this evening's rain. The air is sharp and cold, the mountains hidden behind buildings, in the dark at the end of the road, but he knows it’s going to snow soon.

Holding his breath, he turns his head until he can check the dark alley’s mouth from the corner of his eye. All he hears is the traffic of the next street over. All he sees are shadows and trash cans.

His body still has that feeling that comes with the crossing, like everything inside it is a millimeter off it’s space, and normally he’d go home and take a shower and drink a beer but. He glances at the bar’s sign again.

He can do the beer, at least.

The place is old, and not the good kind. Scuffed wooden bar and chairs and tables, cracked leather on the booths, walls papered with ripped off posters covered with more ripped off posters—bands, events, renaissance faire adverts, missing people, missing cats. The lights are dim but the place isn’t. There are neon beer logos behind the bar and two ancient, gigantic straight-from-the-90s TVs mounted in the corners, both playing two different hockey games.

It smells like piss and beer and wood wax. 

It’s empty, except for two people—a man behind the bar, another sitting in the corner booth, watching one of the games. The bartender doesn’t even look up from cleaning glasses when Jonny comes in—bell ringing over the door like this is a souvenir shop. 

Jonny’s about to go ask the bartender where he can find the psychic when he notices the cards in the other man’s hands. He shuffles them with quick, precise movements, turns three face up on the table, glances at them, and starts over.

He makes his way between the tables.

“Are you Patrick?” he asks. “The, uh, psychic.”

The man snorts a little before turning his attention from the game to Jonny and says, “That’s me. Patrick the psychic,” with sarcastic jazz hands in his voice. 

“I need your help.”

Patrick’s hands still. It’s only when they do that Jonny sees the cards are hockey cards. Patrick takes a look at the three on the table, then back up at Jonny. He leans to the side to check behind him, and Jonny’s heart skips into his throat. He whirls around to check. He hasn’t been followed, he’s sure.

Nothing’s behind him.

Patrick meets his eyes, then tips his chin towards the chair in front of him. “Step into my office. Beer?” He doesn’t wait for Jonny to reply. “Hey Jerry, bring a Guinness, will ya? Something of the old country for tonight, I think,” he adds for Jonny’s benefit.

“I’m not Irish,” Jonny says, sitting down. The chair makes a loud, screechy noise over the wood.

“It’s not for you,” Patrick says with a laugh. 

They wait in silence for Jerry to bring Patrick his beer. The game comes back from commercial break and Patrick’s attention is dragged back to it. His hands never stop shuffling his cards. Shuffle—one, two, three, four, five times—split the pack, turn, split again, turn a second time, then flip the first three cards on top of the table, side by side. He takes a quick glance at them—Jonny has only a second to catch sight of what they are, two of them are facing him, a Guy Lafleur Habs card, and a Crosby card from his QMJHL days. The third is upside-down, facing Patrick, an old black and white card of a Wings player Jonny can’t read the name of before Patrick is picking them up again and starting the whole process over.

Jerry slides the tall glass of black beer across the table and turns to Jonny.

“You want anything?” he asks Jonny in a gruff voice.

“Any light beer you have on tap, please, thank you.”

He waits for Jerry to come back with his beer before speaking again, all the while watching Patrick do his thing with his cards, watching him watch the game. Jonny has to physically make himself stay patient, hand on his thigh to stop his leg from jiggling. Tries to match his breathing to the pace of the cards.

He’s heard about Patrick from a couple of trustworthy people but it’s hard to really believe he is what he is just looking at him. He’s not exactly a short guy, but he’s not exactly tall either, Jonny can tell even with both of them sitting down. He’s got a plaid shirt on with the sleeves rolled up, a backwards baseball cap over dirty-blond hair curling messily at his neck. Square jaw, square chin, blue eyes. He’s young—Jonny’s age—but that Jonny already knew. Put a solo cup in his hands instead of cards and he’d look in his element at a frat party. 

But then, the cards. That’s what Jonny’s here for.

“What are they telling you?” he asks after taking a sip of his beer. Already he can feel his body starting to slot back into place. Jonny doesn’t know how it works, but alcohol always helps. Nothing too strong though—he’d thought of trying that once, to speed up the process. It didn’t go well. 

Patrick’s eyes come back to him, but Jonny has the weird feeling his attention had never really strayed away. “What makes you think they are?”

“You’re a psychic. Cards are like, basic tools of the trade.”

Patrick stops shuffling and puts the pack on the table, turns the first card over—a recent Ovechkin one. “They’re hockey cards,” he says.

Jonny shrugs. “I’ve seen weirder stuff used for divination.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Cherry pits. Spaghetti. A lot of food-related stuff actually. The left hand bones of five corpses who had died on the full moon.”

“Classic midnight hedge-witch.”

Jonny leans back in his chair. “You don’t seem surprised I know about this stuff.”

“Why would I be?” Patrick says, picking the next card on top of the pile and turning it over. He looks pensively at it for a moment and Jonny forces himself to watch his face, not the card. Patrick pinches his lips together. “You’re a Walker, it’s no surprise you’d know we exist.”

Jonny startles and sits up straight again. “How did you—?” His eyes flick to the cards.

Patrick laughs and waves a hand. “Nah, man, I didn’t see that in the cards. You’ve trailed in some dust with you. Did you just come from a crossing?”

His chair hits the floor with how fast he stands up, a loud bang that echoes in the empty bar. He swivels to the left, to the right, and-—there! He can see it from the corner of his eye, the dust he’s trailed in—bright pink and shimmery silver at the entrance of the bar. Shit.

Shit, shit, shit. 

He marches to the door, banging into a couple tables on the way and swipes his foot over the area where he knows the dust is. It’s not gonna do much at this point, he’s probably left some leading to this spot. He peers into the night through the door’s window.

Nothing. 

It’ll fade soon enough. Hopefully before he gets tracked down. Fucking rookie mistake.

“Should be more careful,” Patrick says when he comes back to the corner booth.

“Was a bit busy with other things,” Jonny replies, putting his chair back in place and sitting down, angled now, so he can see the door just at the edge of his vision. “Actually, that’s why I’m here,” he says. “But first, you’re gonna tell me how you can see that dust. Only fairies and Walkers and some witches can see that.” He’s never heard of psychics being able to see those traces before unless they’ve been given the Sight, and Patrick definitely hasn’t. That shit leaves an undeniable mark to people like him. Psychics are just humans with a gift. Witches are too, but then again, you do what some of them do for long enough, you become something else. 

“I can’t really,” Patrick says. “My Gift,”—he makes a vague gesture to his face and eyes— “I think it just sometimes catches on the edges and I see… blurs. Kind of like, faint distortions, like heat rising from the pavement but more centralized. I’ve just learned over the years what they mean. Or I mean, sometimes it’s just a blur. But considering it’s far too cold tonight for heat to be rising off this janky bar’s floor, that I’m not drunk enough or tired enough for things to get specifically blurry…” He shrugs. “Call it an educated guess… that you more than confirmed.”

Jonny rolls his eyes. It wasn’t like he was gonna keep it a secret considering why he’s here. But. He swallows. He’s never been quite able to shake off the defensive reaction. You get treated like shit by both sides and you end up testy about it, sue him. He doesn’t know any Walker without a chip on their shoulder. And well, there’s also the issue at hand. The issue where Jonny barely escaped with his life tonight.

His heartbeat picks up right away. His throat starts to close, and it’s there again, at the edge of his awareness, in the darkness, pacing Jonny’s steps.

“That’s what I’m here about,” he says. “The crossing.”

“What about it?” Patrick asks.

“There’s something—” He stops. There’s something hunting me, he wants to say. There’s something hungry in the in-between. His hands are getting wet, sweat along his spine. Even when he blinks, it’s there in his mind, in that fraction of a second.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out. Grounds himself and leans back again in his chair. “Actually, why don’t you tell me,” is what he says instead.

Patrick’s eyes sharpen on him. “Are you testing me, Jonathan?” 

“It’s Jonny. And I didn’t tell you my name. Also, yes.”

Truth is, Jonny already knows Patrick’s the real deal. Not just from his sources. Even without them he’d know. You spend a lifetime around magic, all kinds of magic on both sides of the veil—everyone needs a messenger, an errand boy—and you know when someone has it. You maybe can’t tell to which extant, or all the particular details—magical and gifted folks are nortoriously fucking shady about it all anyway—but you can tell when someone’s not a fraud. There are a lot of frauds in Patrick’s line of work. 

Jonny just wants to linger. He wants to stay here as long as he can, until the dust he’s left behind like a goddamn trail has faded. The thought of going back into the night is crippling. Now that the immediate danger is gone, his adrenaline faded, it’s as if his brain and body are finally starting to catch up to what happened in a real, non-reactionary mode, and Jonny’s scared. He’s scared shitless.

This janky as fuck bar has just become his haven, and the frat boy psychic across the table his lifeline. 

He crosses his arms, raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

Patrick snorts. “Sure, why not.” He swipes up his cards and puts them in a small box beside him on the booth.

“You’re not gonna use those?”

“The hockey cards? No, that’s just for me. Psychics tend to have…” Patrick reaches under the table and pulls up a duffel bag he sets beside him. “Call them tokens. Objects that only make sense to them, in a very personal context. It one kind of tool to hone our gift, but it focuses it too. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with portents and omens everywhere. You focus on that and, well, it helps.”

“Hockey cards?”

“I love hockey, man. If you knew me, it would make perfect sense.” He stops what he’s doing, pondering. “I’m guessing you’re not the crystal ball kind of guy.”

There’s movement at the corner of Jonny’s eye and he jerks towards it, but it’s just Jerry locking the door for the night. When he settles back down, Patrick’s staring hard. 

“How did you know my name?” Jonny asks.

Patrick shakes his head. “Just knew you were a Walker from these parts. Kinda put two and two together. The only other Walker I’ve heard about that comes here is a chick named Amelia. You don’t look like an Amelia to me. Also, you took a vial of fairy honey to my grandma years ago. I didn’t meet you then, but she mentioned you. Talked about the young Walker with dark hair and dark eyes. Seemed like a good assumption to make that would be you.”

“I think I was maybe ten years old.”

“Yeah, she felt pretty bad about it.”

Jonny frowns. “Why?” 

Patrick cocks his head to the side. “Because you were just a kid?”

Not a lot of people feel bad for Walkers. Not in his world. Walkers do what Walkers do, there’s not much more to it. You start young and you just go on. 

“How is she?”

“Died last year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, you gave her almost another 15 years.”

“I’m just the delivery guy.” He gulps the rest of his beer in one go and leans forward to set the glass carefully on the table. His skin prickles uncomfortably, and he can feel heat on the back of his neck. 

On TV, the game ends. The home team’s won. But Patrick doesn’t even look up this time, all his attention is on Jonny, intense enough he has to work at not squirming in the face of it. Who knows what Patrick’s seeing with his freaky psychic eyes. 

“Okay, Jonny,” Patrick says, putting down another deck of cards on the table. It’s old. Right away, Jonny knows it’s old, and despite himself he scoots closer. 

Patrick unfolds a small, velvet tablecloth and places the pack in the middle of it. With practiced, precise, perfect movements, he fans the cards out. 

“Let’s figure out what’s after you.”


End file.
